President Cyril Ramaphosa has been cleared of any wrongdoing in a preliminary report by South Africa’s anti-corruption watchdog, according to local media reports. The Public Protector has notified implicated parties of its probe into the theft of large amounts of cash from Ramaphosa’s luxury Phala Phala farm, which the president is accused of having attempted to conceal. The scandal, which erupted in June, involved around $500,000 in cash that Ramaphosa acknowledged were stolen from beneath sofa cushions at his ranch. The president, who said the money was payment for buffalos bought by a Sudanese businessman, was accused of failing to report the matter to the police, as well as abusing his powers and exposing himself to a conflict of interest over the affair.
Ramaphosa’s spokesman Vincent Magwenya has confirmed that the president received the report, details of which have been leaked to local media. “As stated before, we reiterate that the president did not participate in any wrongdoing, nor did he violate the oath of his office,” Magwenya said according to South African news outlet News24. “Instead, the president was a victim of a crime that he duly reported to the relevant authorities.”
The report exonerates Ramaphosa but found that the head of the presidential protection unit to whom he reported the crime acted improperly by investigating the case directly instead of reporting it to the police, according to extracts published by several media outlets. The findings have been described as “nonsensical” by left-wing opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters. The scandal almost cost Ramaphosa his job in December when he narrowly escaped a parliamentary vote that could have initiated proceedings to remove him from office and has endangered his chances of securing a second term after next year’s elections.
However, the matter is not yet over for the president. A police investigation is still ongoing, with the head of an elite unit stating earlier this week that detectives have collected more than 120 statements as part of their probe into the affair.